Question--has anyone done a similar DPP to LR comparison to 7D images? I know that there have been a myriad of discussions on softness with the 7D and I'm curious if those come down to the software as well.

I know from experience that there were issues with LR2 and the 7D. While subsequent software updates within LR3 improved it, I'm not convinced that it has been fixed entirely. The other issue was with the contrast areas between lights and darks, such as the black and white feathers on an oystercatcher. Tha said, I haven't done any formal comparisons, as there are other advantages with LR. I tend to look at the overall picture (if you'll excuse the pun), rather than a single factor.

Adobe has always had to play catch up with almost every new canon/nikon camera ever released... Canon doesn't like to play nice and give developers like adobe insights on how to prep, so adobe has to wait until they can get their grubby hands on something to go off of. Canon 5d mark 2, we had to nearly wait a full month before adobe had any support what-so-ever for the camera after first launch... no beta, no release candidate, nothing. To my knowledge, this is the first big release where they at least had something out there to play around with.

I'd actually read/heard somewhere that Canon makes their raw converter's de-mosaicing engine available to developers like Adobe. They just choose to not use it. Likely their own in-house version intergrates better with the rest of their ACR-based applications.

For those who poo-poo DPP you're missing out. No, it's not the zippiest thing but it's really easy to use and provides excellent output that you can further PP in other graphics apps. It's batch-output is really simple to use too. DPP is best thought of as a developing lab for the raw file film. I used to use DxO to max out the detail from some of my shots but recently ran into some problems with the way they did CA correction - it desaturated genuinely colorful fine foliage detail to gray!I went back and tried the same shot on an updated version of DPP and holy cow! Way more sharpness and none of the CA-correction issues that DxO (6 & 7) had with the same file. DxO now sits in the seldom-used corner of my computer. DPP and LR handle the majority of the processing with PS and DxO only brought out under special circumstances. DPP for the intial conversion and rating, LR for tweaks like gradients and hilite/shadow and NR as needed as it exceeds DPP in those areas. Fortunately DPP and Adobe can at least work on the same file (TIFF) types together. DxO is too limited so can't pass files back and forth as readily. (no DNG!!?)